Auckland Council has begin binning rubbish bins that it says are surplus to the city’s requirements.
The Auckland region has thousands of rubbish bins – around 10,000 at the last count in November 2023 – but the Council says a large number of these are underused and contain little or no rubbish when contractors empty them.
“We are looking to save money across the whole council as part of the Annual Budget savings target. Rubbish bin optimisation is one way the council can cut costs and save money,” said Council General Manager for Parks and Community Facilities, Taryn Crewe.
“We estimate the bin optimisation project, with 30% fewer bins across the region, will result in significant savings for ratepayers – around $1.4 million per year, in fact. This is a potential savings of $9.5 million over the next eight financial years.
The bin removal project started in November 2023 and has an expected completion date of 31 March 2024.
“On completion of the optimisation, we will still have around 7,000 bins across our city,” said Ms Crewe.
“We’re taking a careful approach and making sure we only remove the bins that have historically low use, are in neighbourhood parks generally visited by local residents close to home or which are near to other bins.
“We’ve stayed away from making any changes to rubbish bins which are well used, like those in town centres and popular coastal areas, unless there is an excess number of bins in that space. So we don’t anticipate seeing a lot more loose litter because we’ve removed some bins.”
The removed bins won’t be going to landfill, with Council to either recycle them as scrap metal or be kept as replacements for remaining bins should they sustain damage in the future.
